


Rumour Has It

by CommaSplice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-09 21:22:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8912461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommaSplice/pseuds/CommaSplice
Summary: When Catelyn Stark takes up unexpectedly with Roose Bolton, everyone starts talking.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Tumblr prompt that [dothestannisky](http://dothestannisky.tumblr.com/) submitted so long ago that I can't find the original prompt post. The request was: Roose and Catelyn: college professors AU.
> 
> Thank you to [Vana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana) for the beta read!!!!

* * *

Roose Bolton had never been one for socializing with colleagues. Necessity might force him to interact with them at the university, but he saw no reason why friendship was required. For fifteen years, he had attended the requisite university functions, but had steadfastly refused invitations to lunches, dinners, nameday, and retirement parties, most of which had mercifully dried up after his first year of employment. He roomed alone at conferences. At no point had he ever displayed photos of his sons or either of his wives in his office. The closest he had ever come to discussing his life with anyone had been on the single occasion when he had contracted a vicious case of the flu that had required him to cancel his lecture.

The students called him “unapproachable” (the less polite ones called him other things on his course evaluations, but as he was possessed of tenure, it was of little consequence). To his face, his kinder colleagues called him “reserved.”

So it was both a surprise and an annoyance, when after his divorce from Bethany, so many people came out of the woodwork attempting to remedy his single status. 

Roose couldn’t even fathom how they had found out, but now everywhere he turned the newly-divorced were there with slips of paper containing information on support groups and dating sites. 

“Come to dinner on Friday,” more than one person would beg. 

“You need to get back on the horse,” others would say. 

For months after his divorce, he had been invited to potlucks, backyard barbecues, dinners, lunches, and pool parties with the promise of “I know you’ll hit it off with her.” 

His stony-faced refusals only seemed to encourage them more. “You have to put yourself out there,” the woman who drove the mail truck told him unasked. 

“There’s a singles group at my Sept,” another person said, helpfully adding that he wouldn’t even need to be a member of the Faith.

And then one day he reluctantly drove Catelyn Stark to a mandatory faculty reception because her car had a flat.

“Ohhhh,” Yohn Royce said in a whisper to him as they settled into their seats. “No wonder you’re not interested in my cousin.”

“You’re perfect for each other,” an associate professor from another department made a point of saying to him. 

“We’re not dating. Catelyn needed—”

“—None of my business, of course. You’re absolutely right. I won’t say a word. All the same, I stand by what I just said.” His phone rang. “That’ll be my daughter wanting a ride. Later!”

And that seemed to be that. No one talked about it again. The offers of fixing him up and all the advice dried up almost instantly. All it required of him was occasionally giving Catelyn rides or helping her with the odd household repair. She did the same for him. They had never come out and discussed the matter, but Roose concluded that she had been subject to similar pressures and found the arrangement as satisfactory as he did.

* * *

Six months later

* * *

“I tell you,” Asha insisted. “They’re banging.”

From the end of the hall, Renly eyed the backs of the heads of Roose Bolton and Catelyn Stark and then looked at Asha Greyjoy in utter disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Nope.”

In the ordinary course of events, Renly and Asha would never have socialized, but they were the newest and youngest members of the history department and as such had banded together. “She is of a certain age and her options are more limited,” Renly allowed as they walked down the hallway to meet them, “but I think she could do a lot better than the Leech Lord.”

“Then she’s slumming.” Asha dug in the pocket of her leather jacket for her gloves. “C’mon. Let’s get this farce over with. And later you’re going to have to tell me why everyone calls him that.”

The farce in question was attending one of the new Provost’s “listening talks.” Renly suspected that this was a rather futile event. He was new to academia, but from the bits he’d heard muttered in the halls suggested that the Provost had arrived with an agenda set in granite and this was more or less a sop to the rank and file—to prove that the administration really did want their feedback. 

But when he had suggested to an older colleague that he might skip it, the reaction had convinced him this was one of those tiresome activities they were expected to attend. 

“Only one on this campus and at the worst possible time,” Asha muttered. 

Renly was in total agreement. It was why they were all carpooling to the university’s main campus. Parking there was practically non-existent. “Thanks for doing this,” he said to Roose as they met up with them. 

“Don’t be silly,” Catelyn replied. “We were going there anyhow.”

Asha caught Renly’s eye.

It didn’t have to mean anything. Both Catelyn Stark and Roose Bolton had been faculty at Raventree for years.

Renly did wonder how they were going to find a parking spot. His normal practice when going to the main campus was to tack on a good twenty minutes to the travel time. 

When he had suggested this, Roose arched his eyebrows. “I never have a problem.”

When they arrived at the faculty lot, Renly learned why. 

The typical approach was to wait in a somewhat orderly line. As a person emerged from the nearest sidewalk, one rolled down the window and inquired as to the lot where the person was parked. Then one either followed the person or gave the individual a ride to his or her car. It was ungainly, but it did work—unless (and this was Renly’s usual experience) another driver swooped in and took the spot before one could execute the turn. 

When this occurred to them, Renly felt a mixture of annoyance and smugness. 

Roose remained calm. 

“We could try the overflow lot,” Asha suggested. 

Renly agreed. “I don’t mind walking.”

He spared them a glance. His normally pleasant expression had turned hard. “No.”

“We’ll be late if—”

But he was out of the car. He did nothing more than stand and lock eyes with the boy who was getting out of his SUV. Or rather, what was probably his parents’ SUV, Renly thought. The bumper sticker “My child is an honor student at Baelor the Blessed Academy” suggested it did not belong to him.

Catelyn wasn’t paying any attention, but was instead sorting through her capacious handbag. 

Renly watched as the student’s defiance melted away. 

“Sorry, my bad. I didn’t see you.”

Roose said nothing, but waited until the boy got back into the SUV and then after the SUV lumbered away, he backed the car in. “There,” he told them almost cheerfully. 

“I’ll have to try that next time,” Asha muttered.

When they arrived at their destination, it was clear that whatever else they were, Catelyn and Roose were clearly old hands at this. They surveyed the room even as they exchanged greetings with colleagues. 

“Five rows from the back on the left-side side,” Roose murmured.

Renly noted Roose’s suggestion had been solely directed to Catelyn.

“The back row is free,” Asha said. She waved to a group of four chairs on the right still as yet unclaimed.

Catelyn smiled kindly. “We won’t be able to see that far away and on that side. If we take those seats there, we’ll have a better vantage point and we’ll be able to leave discreetly from the end if the Provost goes too long.”

“Yes,” Roose agreed. He exchanged a glance with Catelyn and then move purposely toward the long thin refreshment table at the back of the room. 

Catelyn draped her coat over the four metal folding chairs. “Oh, there’s Ellyn. Excuse me.”

Renly and Asha followed Roose toward the table. He took a plate and carefully selected a few pieces of fruit, a cookie, and a brownie. The last two seemed odd to Renly. The man was a health nut. He hooked his fingers around two bottles of water and then went toward where Catelyn was chatting, who took the plate and one of the waters from him with a quick smile.

“I told you. They’re banging.”

Renly turned toward Asha. “You’re right.”

* * *

“Of course you can stop by,” Mum said in a bright, happy voice that was totally at odds with the expression of horror on her face.

Rickon tensed. He knew what was coming. 

“Wonderful. See you then.” She hung up the phone, looked around the living room wildly, and then immediately dialed again, taking the receiver with her. 

Rickon couldn’t make out all of her words, but a few were all too audible.

“Roose, I need you.”

That meant Dr. Bolton, who Rickon and his siblings were all pretty sure was dating Mum. 

Rickon scowled, but there was no point in saying anything. Mainly because he knew that if Mum had not already whipped herself up into a state about the impending visit from company, she was going to very shortly. Without being told to, he turned off the TV and his laptop. 

It wouldn’t be enough. Not even Dad had ever been able to reason with Mum when she got this way. Anyhow Dad was gone now and Mum still wasn’t back to normal or she wouldn’t be dating Dr. Bolton. 

“Why do people do this?” Mum wondered aloud in a voice of despair. “Less than an hour, they said, and the house is filthy!”

The house was not filthy, Rickon knew. Sure, it was kind of cluttered sometimes, but Mum was always wiping stuff down and she had a lady come in to do the floors twice a month. And she was usually on him to clean up his room. But he did what Dad and later Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran had always told him to do when Mum got like this: keep your head down and do whatever Mum said. So he did.

“Thank the gods you’re here,” Mum said as she let in Dr. Bolton in through the side door.

Rickon muttered “Freak” under his breath. He was pretty sure Dr. Bolton had heard, although the guy looked more amused than anything else. Mum definitely did because she whipped her head around. “Stop it, Rickon.”

“What?” Rickon said, adopting an expression of innocence. 

“We’ll talk about it later.” 

Rickon was counting on her forgetting all about this. His chances were good. Mum was almost at the point where she would start throwing things out with wholesale abandon. 

She turned to Dr. Bolton. “Food. They’ll want nibbles. Gods, what do I have to serve them?”

Dr. Bolton seemed unfazed. He merely waited.

“Vegetables! Would you cut some?” 

“Of course.”

She thrust an all-purpose cleaner and a roll of paper towels at Rickon. “Wipe everything down in the guest bath and put some clean towels—nice ones in there—and then get your backpack out of the living room.” 

When Rickon came back, Dr. Bolton had retrieved a bunch of carrots and celery and radishes and stuff from the fridge and was chopping them up with the competence of a very calm, very expert sous chef. “How long do we have?”

Mum piled stacks of magazines and journals into the cupboard that held the pots and pans. “Fifteen minutes, I think. Rickon, I told you to take your backpack to your room.” 

Rickon was in the act of doing this, when Mum raced in and placed Dr. Bolton’s satchel by the sofa.

“How come he gets to have his stuff in the living room and I have to move mine?” Rickon demanded as he followed Mum back into the kitchen. 

“Do it again.”

“What?”

Mum didn’t look up as she shoved a pair of running shoes into the same cupboard. “I said ‘wipe down everything,’ not ‘squirt some cleaner on the vanity and give it a half-hearted pass with a single paper towel.’ ” Again she ran back into the living room.

It was uncanny sometimes how Mum seemed to know all and see all. 

Dr. Bolton had found a platter and was placing carrot sticks on it. 

Mum called from the living room. “Rickon!”

“I find it is best not to argue in situations like this,” Dr. Bolton commented in a mild voice. He rummaged in the refrigerator and found a half-used container of hummus. 

“What would you know about it?”

“My ex-wife used to get like this on the rare occasion we had unexpected guests.” He examined the expiration date on the container lid. “Especially when her sister was the unexpected guest, so it’s not altogether surprising that your mother should be reacting to the arrival of hers.”

Rickon froze. “Aunt Lysa?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Rickon Elmo Stark. MOVE. NOW.”

He sighed and obeyed. 

With thirty seconds to spare, the three of them had the place in what Mum considered acceptable condition. The weird thing though was that even as Mum went to the door, she stopped to move Dr. Bolton’s satchel to an even more visible position before switching on a smile to greet her company.

* * *

Domeric squeezed her hand in what was meant to be a comforting gesture. All Cerenna Lannister felt was ill. They hadn’t been in his mother’s living room for more than five minutes and the entire morning had complete disaster scrawled all over it in indelible marker.

Not that Domeric understood just why she was so nervous. And even after she explained how Uncle Tywin had taken a paternal role in her life after her father had died and was very particular, Dom didn’t quite get it. They loved each other. What did it matter what her uncle thought? 

But then you really had to experience Tywin Lannister live and in person to get him. 

In theory, Uncle Tywin _might_ (and that was a very big might) have been all right with her marrying Domeric Bolton. But there were strikes against him. For one he came from comparatively modest circumstances. For another his career prospects as a musician were not that encouraging—at least from Uncle Tywin’s perspective. But then once you added in Dom’s family and it was like they brought their own nails and hammers to seal the coffin. 

Cerenna had met them individually (all but the half-brother who was serving the life sentence with no hope of parole—by some miracle, Uncle Tywin hadn’t found out about Ramsay yet, and Cerenna certainly wasn’t going to enlighten him). Domeric had been enthusiastic about his family. He loved his parents and he adored his aunt. 

Domeric’s mother was a cold, silent woman, but she was positively the image of warmth and loquacity compared with his father.

It was clear they cared for Domeric. 

It was equally clear they were baffled that they cared. 

His aunt was more socialized than either of his parents, but she was very prickly and beyond acerbic, with a propensity to oversharing the strangest things (Cerenna really could have gone the rest of her life without hearing what the blood from Barbrey Ryswell Dustin’s hymen had looked like on her first boyfriend’s dick).

Add in Uncle Tywin, who was probably this close to physically dragging her back to the Westerlands and away from these déclassé northern icebergs and her musician fiancé, and it promised to be a doomed-laden morning.

They sat there: Uncle Tywin, Domeric, his mother, his aunt, and Cerenna, no one speaking. All of them waiting for Dom’s father with his serial killer eyes to arrive. She glanced at the carriage clock on the mantel. From the way Uncle Tywin’s eyes were glinting, Cerenna thought she had perhaps fifteen minutes left before he threatened to cut her off from the Lannister money and the Lannister family if she didn’t leave with him and there.

And then, with the arrival of Dom’s father and the father’s girlfriend, it all changed.

“I do hope you can forgive me,” Catelyn Stark said after introductions were made. “It’s my fault we’re late. One of my sons decided this morning would be a fine time to tell me about a project that’s due tomorrow. You know how it is—well, no, you don’t. From everything Roose has told me about Domeric, he never put you through anything like that.” She turned to Domeric. “I’m so pleased to finally meet you.”

“How many kids do you have, Dr. Stark?” Cerenna asked.

“Call me Catelyn. Five. Rickon, he’s my youngest, he still lives with me.” She accepted tea, told Dom’s mother she had a lovely home, and proceeded to ask Cerenna and Domeric questions about themselves.

Admittedly, Dom’s mother and aunt were shooting incredulous looks at each other, and Uncle Tywin was still uncharmed, but it was so blessedly . . . normal. And even when it turned out that Uncle Tywin had known and disliked Catelyn Stark’s late husband and somehow that Dom’s aunt had history with her, everyone was acting less like waxwork dummies and more like actual human beings. 

“. . . such a lovely couple,” Catelyn Stark was saying. “Roose and I looked at your photos on Facebook.”

Domeric blinked. “My dad? Dad? Since when do you know how to use Facebook?”

“I don’t. Catelyn helped me out.”

“Roose isn’t much for social media,” Catelyn said apologetically.

“I can see how it has business applications,” Domeric’s father conceded, “But it is foolish to share personal information in such a public forum.”

This turned out to be really good opinion for him to express, because Uncle Tywin felt exactly the same way and unbent long enough to gruffly congratulate Dom’s father on his good sense. Then somehow it was revealed that both men hunted and they started having a lengthy if tersely worded conversation about guns, and discovered they had the same opinion about something called the Remington Sendero SF II. From there slowly, inch by painful inch, they seemed to reach an silent understanding that maybe she and Domeric together might not be the worst thing to ever happen. 

Meanwhile at the other end of the room, the other two women, taciturn northerners though they were, were grilling Catelyn Stark in a manner which Cerenna was intimately familiar with. They were perfectly polite, but all while Uncle Tywin and Roose Bolton were monosyllabically establishing that Domeric needed to have a more stable day job and a sound investment portfolio with which to support Cerenna, Dom’s mother and aunt were digging into the specifics of Catelyn’s relationship with Roose Bolton. 

Catelyn Stark was more than equal to the interrogation, holding her own, while thrusting her own conversational daggers. Cerenna had no idea who “Brandon” was, but he seemed to be a sore point between Barbrey and Catelyn. Bethany was much more focused on what exactly Catelyn was doing with her former husband and just when it had started. 

Cerenna thought the most pertinent question was “why,” but all she really cared about was that by the end of brunch, the way was clear for her to be with Domeric.

“See, I told you it would be all right,” Domeric said after it was all over. He looked back at the driveway where his father was opening the car door for Catelyn Stark. “Mother thinks Dad’s having some kind of mid-life crisis.”

Cerenna thought it was unlikely that Roose Bolton had ever been in crisis about anything. “I liked her.”

“She’s a bit . . . odd, don’t you think?”

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

“What the hell was that?” Asha demanded as she and Selyse met at the entrance of the pub. It was a rhetorical question. What it had been was the attempt of a few misguided female colleagues to persuade Catelyn Stark that she needed to end her relationship with Roose Bolton.

They got a booth right away, probably because it was a Monday night and the weather was exceptionally shitty. A waitress came up. Selyse ordered a glass of Pinot Gris and Asha settled on rye. 

“And why were we there?”

“I was there because I was five minutes too late in leaving and Rylene cornered me in the elevator,” Selyse said. “She told me her car was in the shop overnight and needed a ride. I assumed she was being too cheap to get a cab. You?”

Asha accepted her drink from the waitress. “They told me it was a group for mentoring women at Raventree to tenure and eventually full professorship.” 

“It is. Normally.”

“Like I care who Catelyn is sleeping with.” 

Selyse didn’t say anything, but took a long swallow of her wine. 

Asha didn’t really know Selyse. Renly had suggested she was a frigid religious fanatic of a fruitcake, but after the debacle of that . . . intervention they’d just escaped from, Selyse had been the only other person reacting with any semblance of sanity. And besides, Selyse didn’t act like a crazed religious nut. She showed up when she was supposed to, taught her classes, did her committee work, and still wrote. True, she kept to herself, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Right now though, she was giving off a little bit of a judgy vibe. “What?”

“If you don’t care, then you probably shouldn’t have been gossiping about it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You told Renly you thought they were having an affair.”

Asha startled, but tried to recover her composure. “That was an observation I made in a private conversation.”

Selyse gave her a pitying glance. “Renly’s only been here a few months longer than you, but you do realize when people want information to get around, they’re telling him, don’t you?” 

“Shit.” It made sense. Renly was a gregarious kind of guy. He loved to chat. It had been getting irritating of late actually. She’d be trying to focus and he’d either be sending her instant messages or standing at her door. 

“He doesn’t think,” Selyse explained. 

Asha knew that Renly and Selyse were in-laws. Or maybe he’d said they were ex-in-laws. She couldn’t remember exactly. But there was definitely no love lost between them. Still, she wasn’t reading any ill will or malice from Selyse about Renly. “Well, clearly I didn’t either. Damn.” She thought a bit. “Should I apologize to Catelyn?”

“We did that already.”

The waitress came, took away their empty glasses, and placed fresh ones before them. “Your food is almost up.”

They nodded, gave her tight-lipped smiles, and waited for her to leave.

“But that was before I realized I am responsible for half the university thinking that Catelyn and Roose are banging.”

“It’s more like half the department and I don’t think more than a handful of them actually care. And even then, I don’t think everyone there was that invested. I certainly wasn’t.”

“No, you weren’t, were you?” Asha looked at her shrewdly. She had been trying to get a bead on Selyse, but it was tough. Renly had called her querulous for a couple of points the woman had made in their last department meeting, but Asha hadn’t gotten that impression from her. They had been valid arguments and she wondered if he would have been more on board if they had come from someone else. 

“It’s none of my business what Catelyn does,” Selyse said.

“Yeah. I get you.” Asha took a swallow of her rye. “You really didn’t want to come out here with me, did you?”

Selyse shrugged. “I did not want to go to _that_. This is fine.” She set her wine glass back down. “It’s certainly much more palatable to be here with a colleague who treats me like an adult than going home to my snarky social justice warrior daughter.”

It was the most Selyse had ever said about her home life. “How old is she?”

“Shireen is nineteen and very self-righteous. She gets that from her father.” Selyse hesitated and then tapped at her phone before sliding it over to Asha.

Asha looked. Selyse’s kid was no beauty, but she stared at the camera in a no-nonsense way that Asha liked. She said as much now.

Selyse unbent a little more and shared that her daughter had started Uni with almost 30 credits and was already at the top of her class. If she didn’t come out and say so, Asha got the strong sense that Selyse was proud of her kid.

The food came and they concentrated on their meals for a few minutes. 

“I don’t usually gossip,” Asha said. “I was just annoyed about having to go to that talk and it seemed so obvious, even though he’s so strange. I think that’s it. He’s _so_ weird and I keep thinking she can do better.”

“It gets harder when you’re older. It’s awkward having to go places alone. Your peers are paired off. They see a suddenly single woman, and either they stop inviting her over or they try and fix her up with someone. Still.” Selyse set her wine down. “The Leech Lord is a very strange man.”

“I know I just promised not to gossip, but one of these days someone is going to have to tell me why everyone calls him that.”

 

* * *

In search of tea, Catelyn opened up a maple kitchen cabinet to be confronted by rows of vitamin supplement bottles, jars containing nutritional yeast, raw honey, and protein powder, and a shelf worth of packaged dried prunes.

The second cabinet had about four different types of boxed milk, both rice and spelt flour, and Muscovado sugar. She was trying the third, uneasily remembering how Roose had gotten his nickname when Rodrik Barton in Theology had accidentally opened up a package of leeches meant for Roose. She was hoping desperately that she was not going to find pickle jars full of leeches when she unearthed an ancient looking box of Lipton teabags from behind two bottles of Bragg’s Apple Cider vinegar.

“None for me, thank you,” he said in a soft voice, making her jump.

“I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

It had been decades since she’d been in this position and Catelyn wasn’t quite sure how to behave. She’d woken to find a pile of clean towels on a chair along with a new toothbrush. Roose had been nowhere in sight. 

Actually, now that she thought about it, this was a unique situation for her. She’d only been with a few men in her life and in each case, they’d been legitimately dating. It was true that she knew being seen with Roose was having the happy result of keeping well-meaning friends and family from trying to get her to move on with her life, but up until last night, it had been very impersonal.

Roose didn’t seem to be feeling any awkwardness at all. He told her to sit and he offered her several relentlessly healthy breakfast choices.

Catelyn settled on dry nine-grain toast and fruit. He had steel-cut oats with stewed prunes. 

Twice she tried to bring up what had happened last night and twice he merely stared at her. 

“Not that I didn’t enjoy it,” she said after floundering for a way to express what she wanted to say. “It’s just I was upset about that farce at the woman’s faculty mentoring group and, well, it’s not something we had planned on doing.”

“No,” he agreed. “But we are both unattached, consenting adults. I fail to see why this is a problem. We needn’t have sex again if you don’t care to.” Roose glanced at her and continued, “But if you are asking if I would object to doing so again, the answer is no.” With that, he picked up his spoon again and turned his attention to his oatmeal. 

That wasn’t what Catelyn had been saying at all. It was clear, though, that he didn’t consider this a complication on any level and now she found herself entertaining the idea. “You mean we’d be…” She couldn’t bring herself to say “fuck buddies.” “Friends with benefits?”

“Why do we need to categorize it?” Roose asked. “It’s a mutually convenient arrangement. Let’s leave it at that.” He arched an eyebrow.

She realized what he was saying. He had Ned’s coloring and a decidedly Northern outlook on life, but beyond that Roose was absolutely nothing like him. Perhaps that was part of the appeal, she thought. With Roose, it would just be sex. There would be no need to worry that he’d want or expect anything else with her. And when she was ready to end the arrangement, she realized he would be about as emotional as he had been at discovering that he had used the last of the almond milk for his breakfast.

Catelyn thought a few moments more and then nodded.

* * *

Domeric’s married friends kept telling him how lucky he was. His parents had divorced amicably. It made everything that much easier, they said, when it came to getting married.

Easy was not an adjective he would apply to his wedding.

He wanted Cerenna to be happy, he really did. And when she’d told him all those months ago that she’d always dreamed of having a big wedding and that her uncle was more than willing to pay for it, going along with that plan had seemed like an the right thing to do. 

That was before he’d spent weeks debating the merits of Dornish game hens or pan-roasted swordfish.

“Dude,” one of his newly married friends had told him, “Cerenna doesn’t actually want an opinion.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? If I tell her it’s up to her, she gets angry and tells me I’m not invested.”

“You listen and give her the pros and cons and you wait.”

“For what?”

“Sooner or later, she’ll tip her hand and you’ll know which way she’s leaning. Then you tell her that’s your choice too.”

That had helped at first, but as they got closer and closer to the date, Cerenna just got more and more anxious. 

“Don’t you have any more family they could invite? Aunts? Uncles? Cousins?”

“Not that I’m all that close to.”

By that point, Cerenna hadn’t cared. She was growing painfully aware that her side outnumbered his by hundreds. “I want names.”

“Sweetling,” Domeric began.

“Invite them,” she hissed. “Cersei and Aunt Genna won’t shut up about how few people you seem to know. We just got Uncle Tywin calmed down. I don’t care if you haven’t seen them since you were five. They’re getting an invitation.”

But if inviting every extended relative he could find and seemingly every friend or acquaintance he’d ever made placated Cerenna, it was alarming his parents. This, in turn, puzzled Cerenna.

“They’re a little different,” Domeric said. As he looked at his fiancée’s face, he realized that she was in full agreement with this statement. 

He was relieved when she out running errands during the conference call his family made to him upon receiving the extensive agenda for the wedding weekend. 

“A godswood, a heart tree, and a witness are all that’s required,” Dad said as if it was immutable fact.

Domeric decided now was not the time to bring his father’s attention to the part in the agenda about the ceremony happening at the Sept of Lannisport. 

“The Lannisters are the richest family in Westeros, Roose,” Catelyn said. She wasn’t supposed to be on the call, but Domeric concluded that Dad had the phone on speaker and that neither Dad nor his girlfriend realized that.

There was a long silence. 

“A dinner after,” Dad finally conceded. 

Domeric could only imagine Cerenna’s reaction. He decided she didn’t need to know about this conversation. 

Again Catelyn interjected, “The Lannisters are society people. What do you expect them to do? Have a potluck at the fire hall?” 

Domeric had seen pictures from his parents’ wedding—if it hadn’t been quite that basic, their wedding had not been much more elaborate. Mother would be fuming by now. He resisted the urge to hit his head against a wall. “Uh, Dad you have the phone on speaker.”

“There is nothing wrong with a simple wedding,” Mother said.

“Yes, a simple wedding is perfectly respectable,” Dad agreed.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Catelyn objected. “Roose, this is not that extreme. I know all these lunches and things make it seem that way, but really what you need to do is calm your ex-wife down.”

Mother was unflappable—unless someone told her to calm down. If that happened, she usually went nuclear. “Perhaps, Roose,” she suggested in an even voice that presaged a lot of misery for everyone, “you could tell your girlfriend to mind her own business.”

“Dad, look at your phone. There should be an icon? Looks like a microphone?”

But Dad had zeroed in on the location and nature of the ceremony and would not be diverted. “You’re getting married in the faith of the Seven?” He drew in a deep breath. “Did you know about this, Bethany?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued, “This would never have happened if you hadn’t encouraged that friendship with that boy from the Vale.”

“—Perhaps,” Mother said, “If you’d actually been around when I’d needed you—”

“Mother, Dad, we were planning on getting married in the Godswood the next time we come to visit you—”

“Another ceremony?” Dad and Mother said at the same time. 

And then like they were all in some weird Lamaze class, pretty much everyone on the call inhaled at the same time.

“I am going to have to buy at least three more pairs of shoes,” Mother said in a fatalistic voice. “Pack another suitcase. Pay more luggage fees to that wretched airline. I can’t even borrow footwear from Barbrey anymore. Not now that her feet have spread.”

It was probably too late to get Cerenna to just elope with him.

“What does Barbrey’s shoe size have to do with anything?” Dad demanded. “And how much do women’s shoes cost? You had a generous divorce settlement from me. Surely you can afford to pay for as many shoes as you require.”

Domeric realized that Catelyn meant to be helpful she started to offer some advice for Roose to share on the subject of footwear. 

But Mother was too far gone to hear about the wonders of a versatile pair of pumps or how useful an extra pair of kitten heels could be. Not now that Dad had brought up the money from the divorce, which Domeric knew was still a sore point.

On and on it went. Dad brought up some banking officer Mother had flirted with fifteen years ago. Mother started talking weirdly about safe deposit boxes while snarling that Dad’s taste in women had plummeted. (Dad, thankfully, knew enough not to share this with his girlfriend). Catelyn told Dad she was going to go out for a walk because none of this was her business, but that they were all blowing this out of proportion, especially Mother, because what woman didn’t own more than three pairs of heels? 

Finally he could stand it no longer. “YOU’RE ON SPEAKER!”

Blessed silence descended. 

Dad cleared his throat. “There is no need to get upset.”

Mother concurred. “Really, Domeric. We taught you better than that.”

* * *

A year ago, if anyone had told Catelyn that she would be in a relationship with Roose Bolton ( _any_ kind of a relationship) she would have thought them clinically insane. Not only was she not over Ned’s death—nor would she ever be—but Roose was not at all her type. In fact, Catelyn rather doubted he was anyone’s type, two marriages notwithstanding.

Roose maintained it was a convenient way to stave off well-meaning interference from friends and colleagues to find them partners, but it had morphed into something else.

They weren’t in the “friends with benefits” category because they weren’t really friends, even if they were both enjoying the benefits part. 

Until recently, Catelyn had been content to do so. That had been before Roose turned her into his personal Miss Manners. 

Roose reached for his reading glasses and a folder. “I thought you said the groom’s family pays for the bar bill in a Southron wedding.”

“They do.”

“I told Domeric that I would take care of it and apparently that silly girl had some sort of meltdown. Her uncle took personal offense.”

Catelyn sighed. “I can’t help it if the Lannisters are the exception. It’s normally what’s done. Is there any issue with the rehearsal dinner?” She hoped not. Roose had kept her by his side for phone call after phone call with his ex-wife and Catelyn didn’t think she could stand one more discussion.

Roose shook his head. “No. The wedding planner has her assistant helping us. The girl seems to know what she’s doing, although Bethany doesn’t care for her. What do you think?” He handed her yet another folder. “Walda assures us this will be suitable.” He looked at her for her approval.

If the brochures and Yelp review printouts that the assistant had provided were anything to go by, Feastfires would indeed be suitable. “This should be fine.”

“This wedding still seems excessive.”

She peeked over his shoulder at the schedule of events. “It is a lot of socializing,” she said. That was stating it mildly. “Ordinarily there would be a stag party, a bachelorette party, the rehearsal dinner, the ceremony and reception, and then possibly a wedding breakfast.”

Roose arched his eyebrows. 

He was a northerner, she told herself. Ned had thought their own wedding overly elaborate too. Catelyn soldiered on. “Well, we won’t need to go to the breakfast for the early arrivals. You have to go to that luncheon. I should see what I can find to do while you’re at that. It looks like we _might_ be able to get out of the dinner that night. And you only have to make an appearance at the stag.”

“What does 'an appearance' translate to?”

“Thirty to forty minutes would probably be all right. The rest . . . the rest is not optional.”

“A godswood, a tree, and—”

Not this again. “—a witness, yes, I know that’s what you’re used to, but Cerenna is a—”

“—Southron twit.”

Catelyn handed him back the folders. There was no point arguing otherwise. 

“I will tell Domeric you will be accompanying me to the luncheon.”

“You can’t do that.” Catelyn resisted the urge to grit her teeth. “It’s a luncheon for immediate family.”

“An oversight.”

Catelyn let her head hit the pillow. “No, it’s not. If they didn’t consider Domeric’s aunt family, I certainly don’t fit the bill.” It wasn’t sitting well with Roose and Catelyn knew why. It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with his growing dependence on her to serve as a social interpreter. She decided firmness was called for. “You will be fine, Roose.” 

He sighed and exchanged the folder for one of the guidebooks on the night stand.

She had committed to attending this wedding and to the road trip. Roose hated flying. She wasn’t overly fond of it either. They both had lists of places they were interested in visiting and a long road trip would allow her to sightsee and then to see her sister and Robb. And after that . . . after that, Catelyn thought she would suggest to Roose that they go back to only occasionally calling on the other to serve as a beard. 

“Gulltown has a renowned firearms museum.”

Or perhaps she would suggest to Roose that it was time to “break up” and go their separate ways.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go out to [MotherofFirkins](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherofFirkins/pseuds/MotherofFirkins) who was kind enough to help me with some of the wedding details!


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Lysa was a screamer. Petyr had resigned himself to it months ago. He was under no delusion that it was due to his prowess in the bedroom. It was something to be endured. She was also beyond uninhibited.

For once, though, he did not need to pretend she was Cat to get through the night. 

“I can’t understand what’s got into Cat,” Lysa said in a whisper.

From the sounds of that were coming from the other side of the wall, Petyr could well guess just what, or rather who, had gotten into Cat and he was not at all happy about it.

“A midlife crisis,” Lysa decided. 

A midlife crisis would have been Catelyn having an affair with a man half her age. A midlife crisis would have been her trading in her SUV for a sports car. A midlife crisis would have been her chopping off half her hair and dying the rest pink. A midlife crisis would have been her leaving her career of twenty years to write a novel or direct a play or become a nail artist. 

Roose Bolton was nobody’s midlife crisis.

Lysa looked at him and then cupped her ear toward the wall. “I still can’t hear anything.”

“I can.”

“This long?”

“I imagine a little blue pill is responsible for his stamina.” Except that Petyr had taken the liberty of rummaging through their houseguest’s luggage and had seen no pharmaceuticals at all. 

Lysa shrugged. She would be no stranger to such things. Her former husband had been beyond elderly. “He seems like such a hard man.”

Petyr grimaced at the unintentional pun. It was true, though. He had looked into Roose Bolton’s cold grey eyes and had recognized the ruthlessness there. 

“He’s so . . . so . . . odd. Not her type at all.”

Petyr remembered Catelyn’s type all too well: tall, well-built men with jaws of granite and fists to match. If Roose Bolton didn’t look anything like either Brandon or Ned, he had the same northern coloring of her late husband and a solidness that suggested he could hold more than his own in a physical conflict.

“I can’t hear a thing, Petyr. Are you sure you’re not imagining it?”

The springs from the guest room mattress were still squeaking and now Petyr began to hear low moans. 

Lysa turned on her side and opened the night table drawer. “I have earplugs in here somewhere. Jon snored terribly. I pity his next wife. Oh, there they are. Here.”

Petyr accepted the tiny plastic package, but made no move to open it. Lysa turned out the light and settled into slumber quick enough. He lay awake forcing himself to listen, trying to understand just what the object of his affections could possibly see in this man.

* * *

The collective wisdom on the part of the Stark children was that Mum had gone and lost her mind. During the multiple phone calls, group emails, and Skype chats, Robb alone had tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

It wasn’t, he had argued, like she had taken up with some guy twenty years younger two weeks after Dad’s death. It was only a full eighteen months later that she’d started dating and even then, it was not with an unemployed pretty boy, but with a colleague, a few years older than she, and utterly respectable. 

“Wait till you meet him,” Rickon had prophesied like some prophet of doom. “You’ll get it then.”

Having now had the dubious pleasure of making Roose Bolton’s acquaintance, Robb got it. 

Mum smiled at both of them. “I want to thank you and Jeyne again for putting us up. The hotels Roose and I have been staying in are all very nice, but there’s nothing like being with family.” 

Roose Bolton was nothing like family, Robb thought. “I was kind of surprised you guys didn’t fly to Lannisport.” The whole geography of their road trip had been on the bizarre side, but they were academics with three months off and he supposed it made a sort of sense that they wanted to travel around Westeros on their way to the wedding that was their destination.

“I don’t care much for air travel. Security checkpoints,” Roose said. 

“Such a nuisance,” Mum agreed.

Jeyne nodded. “It really is. I hate having to make sure all my toiletries in my carry on are three ounces or less.”

Roose stared at Jeyne five seconds too long before agreeing with her. “Yes.”

From the amount of hair that Roose Bolton had left on his head, Robb kind of doubted that the ability to take enough shampoo and conditioner on board an aircraft was the reason Roose disliked security checkpoints. Robb had already caught sight of the .38 in the shoulder holster. He had decided not to say anything. Mum was sharing a bedroom with the guy. Presumably she knew all about the gun. Robb could only thank the gods that if they were having sex they were being ultra quiet about it. Two nights and he and Jeyne had not heard a peep from their room. 

“All right, he is a little . . . off,” Jeyne agreed later. “But your mother seems happy and for the first time she’s not treating me like some empty-headed twit who trapped you into marriage.”

Still Robb felt he had to say something. He finally had a chance while Roose was loading the car. “Are you all right?” he asked Mum.

“I am perfectly fine.”

“I know how much you loved Dad,” Robb tried again. “And I know people were probably telling you it was time you moved on, but . . .” He could see her smile growing fixed. “Just don’t let anyone pressure you into anything, okay?” Perhaps those weren’t the right words, he realized, but he soldiered on. “If you need me . . . if he . . . uh . . . tries anything . . . you know you can call on me, right?” 

Mum’s eyes were suspiciously bright. “It’s sweet of you to worry, Robb, but I’m fine,” she repeated. 

Maybe it was going to be all right, Robb thought. So what if she was dating? Mum was probably just a little lonely. And if Roose Bolton was carrying a handgun, well, it wasn’t like Uncle Brynden or Uncle Brandon weren’t often without firearms of some sort. He was probably very nice once you got to know him. 

Robb watched as his mother’s boyfriend was laboriously pecking out a reply to someone on his phone. 

“Oh, Jeyne. This is so thoughtful of you,” Mum said, accepting the small cooler of food for the road. 

“Excuse me. My son,” Roose explained. Over the course of the next few minutes, he tapped out the rest of his message, before hitting send, looking both weary and triumphant at conquering not-so-modern technology.

The whole reason they were even in the Westerlands was for the son’s wedding. Mum had persuaded Roose to share pictures of his son and the fiancée last night. Ordinarily having to feign interest in the candid shots of strangers for forty minutes would have been like slow death, but Robb had found it somehow reassuring. The pictures on Roose’s son’s Facebook and Instagram were just so . . . so normal. 

Almost immediately, there was a rattlesnake sound coming from Roose’s phone. The man sighed, started to tap out a reply, before shaking his head and opting to dial.

Okay, so Roose Bolton was nothing like Dad, but he was someone else’s dad. 

“. . . because speaking is faster. We’re leaving now. Yes, we’ll be there a day earlier than we planned.”

Robb relaxed. He’d calm his brothers and sisters down. Mum seemed to be in full possession of her faculties. It was nothing to worry about. 

“. . . Again? But I already met your fiancée once.” Roose frowned. “So I can get to know her?” He pulled the phone away, stared at it with an expression of utter perplexity before bringing it back to his ear. “Why would I want to do that?”

Or Mum was dating a serial killer.

* * *

Barbrey looked up from her new friend’s _Lonely Planet Lannisport_ travel guide. “Oh, I think that’s the place.” She pointed to Marbrands, a Westerlands department store that supposedly boasted even better aerial views than Casterly Rock.

“Perfect.” Catelyn adjusted the shoulder strap of her bag and turned toward Marbrands. “It looks like the art museum isn’t far from here.”

Barbrey would never admit this, not in a thousand years, but she was enjoying sightseeing with Catelyn Stark. 

Truthfully, she hadn’t given much thought to what she’d be doing once she and Bethany got to Lannisport. They had three days of wedding-related luncheons and breakfasts and parties to get through, but looking at the schedule, she had seen that there would be a full five hours of free time to explore. The original plan had been that her sister would join her in this.

That had been before two connecting flights, more snark from Beth than she’d experienced in a lifetime, and the revelation that smack dab in the middle of that five-hour period she and Roose would be having lunch with Domeric and Cerenna—a lunch to which Barbrey was not invited.

So when Roose stalked off claiming he had business to attend to and when her sister abandoned her so she could go obsess about the outfits she’d brought, Barbrey had reluctantly accepted Catelyn’s half-hearted invitation to join her. 

By the time she and her one-time rival were seated in the touring boat enjoying their second glass of cab sav, Barbrey was feeling more expansive toward Catelyn than she had in decades. 

“I’m glad this worked out,” Catelyn said. “I’m still shocked you weren’t included at the luncheon. From everything Domeric said, he considers you almost like a second mother.”

Barbrey unbent a little further. She had been tempted to throw her rebound fling with Ned in Catelyn’s face, but Barbrey was enjoying this outing and if she went down that road, she’d be stuck hearing from Beth whatever indignities had happened at the luncheon.

“I think we have another hour before we have to return,” Catelyn said. “It’s been so nice not to have to be involved in that circus.” She caught the eye of the server and held up her glass. “I’m happy for Domeric and Cerenna, but I will not be sorry when I’m home. This trip…”

Barbrey could not begin to fathom what a road trip of weeks with Roose would be like. “I have to ask—”

The server returned with more wine for the two of them. 

“It’s not serious,” Catelyn said. 

“Does Roose know that?”

* * *

Tywin did not care for the situation he saw developing before him. He had accepted the inevitability of Cerenna marrying Domeric Bolton. If the young man was not a Lannister, there were signs that he could be molded into something worthy of the hand of Joanna’s favorite niece. Without a second thought, Tywin had offered to pay for Cerenna’s dream wedding. And even if this would be a more modest ceremony than most Lannister weddings were wont to be, up until now, the festivities had been proceeding comparatively calmly.

Kevan came over to him. “Are you going to stand there like a statue all night?”

“Over there. In the corner.” He nodded his head to where Roose Bolton was deep in conversation with the wedding planner’s assistant. 

“What about it?” Kevan asked after a moment. “From what Cerenna said, the assistant was the one who found this place. I’d never heard of it, but it seems suitable.” He held up his glass. “Have you tried the Malbec? From what Cerenna said, neither of Domeric’s parents drink. I was afraid we’d be served Coca Cola.”

The Malbec did, in fact, meet with Tywin’s approval. That the assistant was now giggling and that Cerenna’s future father-in-law showed no signs of moving away did not. “I refuse to have a scandal.”

Kevan watched for a moment and shrugged. “I don’t see anything scandal worthy.”

Tywin scanned the crowd of guests for Catelyn Tully Stark. “Where is the woman? She’s more than attractive. He should have no cause to look elsewhere.”

“The last time I saw she was talking to the aunt.”

Tywin finally caught sight of her. Emmon had trapped her into a conversation. Tywin had to give Catelyn Stark credit. There was no sign that she was bored or irritated. She listened to whatever nonsense Emmon was spouting with grace and attentiveness. “I was mistaken.”

“Now you’re talking sense.”

“She isn’t able to see the situation from that part of the room or she would not allow it to continue. She’s too shrewd not to.”

“Situation?” Kevan sighed. “All right, I will admit that Bolton seems to be paying more attention to the assistant’s breasts than he should, but in his defense, they are somewhat…you’re not listening, are you?”

Tywin decided he would rescue Catelyn Stark from Emmon and deposit her with her boyfriend himself. The woman would know how to handle it. Initially, Tywin had thought her flighty and infuriating, but after several conversations with her over the course of the last few days, he had come to think her quite intelligent—even if she was more infuriating than he had first thought.

* * *

“My money’s on adoption,” Jaime pronounced as he joined his cousin Daven on the terrace.

The house was still swarming with wedding guests, but people were finally heading to bed or to other quiet corners of Casterly Rock. 

“Gods, I hope so.” Daven pushed the bottle unasked toward him. “Or affair. I could live with Domeric being the product of an affair. Not that his mother is that much better than his father.”

“Of the two, she seems closest to being a human being. But for Cerenna’s sake, I hope Domeric was adopted.” Jaime poured a generous measure of bourbon into his glass and another into his cousin’s. 

Daven drank deeply. “The family resemblance is too strong,” he said after a moment. “Same coloring. Same eyes. Same nose. Same physique.”

“Not the same personality,” Jaime said. “Of either parent. I know you’re worried for Cerenna, but Domeric seems like an ordinary, nice, if boring guy.”

“You say that now, but you just wait. Five years from now they’re probably going to be digging bodies out of his backyard saying ‘Domeric seemed like such a nice guy,’ ” Daven theorized. 

Jaime laughed. “If Cerenna was marrying Roose Bolton, I would say you had something to be concerned about. I think Father had someone do a background check.”

“On Domeric. He should have run one on the father too.”

Jaime had the feeling his father had been thinking the selfsame thing. He had made the mistake of walking up to what turned out to be a heated conversation between Father and Catelyn Stark. After she turned on her heel and left his father standing there staring after her, Jaime had been treated to five full minutes about how Roose Bolton was going to land them all on the front page and drag the Lannister name into the dirt.

Tyrion would have said something; he would have been incapable of not saying anything. Jaime knew better. He had bit down on his lip and refrained from saying to his father that he should have realized that Roose Bolton was serial killer material. And then Father had started going on about Emmon’s overly-endowed niece and Bolton’s wandering eye and how that infuriating redhead refused to do anything about it. 

All he did now, though, was repeat that Cerenna was marrying Domeric, not Roose Bolton, and that Daven had nothing to worry about.

* * *

Walda consulted her checklist. Her boss was busy dealing with the bride, which was just fine with Walda. Cerenna was textbook. She had started out as a perfectly reasonable, intelligent, even-tempered young woman and now she was everything but. After the ceremony, she’d calm down. They always did.

No, her job now was to make sure that the groom was all set and then she was supposed to check in with the groom’s parents. 

Her boss had actually apologized for this. “I swear to the gods if I have to hear ‘A godswood, a heart tree, and a witness’ one more time, I will literally scream.”

After talking with Roose (he had told her two times to call him by his first name) at the rehearsal dinner and doing a little googling of northern wedding ceremonies, Walda thought it could be kind of elegant. There was one picture she’d seen on Pinterest that she’d liked enough to pin it to her secret wedding board. 

The groom was calm. “How’s Cerenna?”

Walda inspected him. “Glowing. Now remember, after the ceremony, there are—”

“—the photos. Yes, I know.”

The best man was fine, so now Walda moved out to the entrance to the Sept to make sure the groom’s parents were okay. Mrs. Bolton and Mrs. Dustin tersely informed her they did not require her assistance. Mr. Bolton—no, Roose—poor thing, seemed very weary, but submitted to Walda adjusting his boutonniere. 

“The rest is the fun part,” she said. “Well, there are the photos first.” Walda never liked having her picture taken. “But you will want mementos of this.”

All three of them stared at her. 

Roose collected himself first. “Yes, of course. Will I—will we see you after the ceremony?”

“Oh, yes. We’re here till the end. You look very—you all—look very nice,” Walda said. She felt both the groom’s mother and aunt look at her sharply, but she lowered her head over the checklist until they moved down the aisle to take their places.

* * *

Bethany had been telling herself that the important thing was that Domeric was happy. If she had been able to bear the thirty-six hours of labor it had taken to give birth to her son, she could survive this circus of a wedding.

That was before they arrived at their table. Domeric had asked her if she was okay sitting with Roose and his girlfriend and she’d consented to that. Barbrey and their brother, Roger, had always been a given. She had sighed long and hard on seeing Roose’s aged and severely deaf Aunt Louise, a woman who had never liked her. There was a man with greying-brown hair and blue eyes who turned out to be Domeric’s manager. But Bethany had not counted on being seated with their three Ryswell cousins: Ryella, Alyx, and Jocelyn. She hadn’t seen these women in decades. Five minutes into the dinner and the reasons for not keeping in touch all came flying back.

Everyone agreed upon two things: Domeric was a very nice young man and that he and Cerenna made a lovely couple.

Roger had two topics of conversation: mutual funds and alpacas. Their cousins hadn’t seen each other in years, but almost instantly began bickering about a feud involving possession of their late grandmother’s enameled chocolate set. Bethany remembered it as being turquoise and gold and hideous, but it might as well have been encrusted with Rhaegar’s rubies to hear them tell it. Roose’s aunt picked fault with everything in a very loud voice and didn’t appear the least interested in anything anyone else had to say. 

To make matters worse, Roose was in fine form. It started when their server approached the table and attempted to refill their wine glasses. 

Roose moved his hand to cover his. “For the last time, I don’t drink.”

“There are hundreds of people here, Roose. It’s a bit too much to expect that the server is going to remember everything.” Catelyn smiled at the girl and held up her own glass.

Domeric’s manager did the same with such alacrity that Bethany almost felt sorry for him.

The girl apologized and promised to remember Roose’s preference.

“What?” he asked after the server had hurried off to the next table. “This is her job. She is supposed to know these things.”

Catelyn started to say something and then thought better of it. Instead she took another large swallow of wine.

Bethany wondered if Catelyn knew that Roose was probably counting just how many drinks she’d had or if his deliberate manner meant that he was very much on edge. 

The food never stopped coming. Roose frowned at every course, complaining about saturated fats and cholesterol. 

“It’s a wedding,” Catelyn said. “They’re not going to serve boiled dinner.”

Bethany could tell by the icy look Roose shot his girlfriend just how well _that_ remark had gone over.

Domeric’s manager was the first to raise his glass when the server returned. 

Catelyn made the mistake of asking a question about Roger’s alpacas.

The small amount of satisfaction Bethany felt at seeing Catelyn’s smile grow strained was outweighed by the general misery of having to hear in minute detail the difficulties involved with shearing alpacas. 

“ . . . Grandma told me that she wanted _me_ to have the chocolate set . . .”

“. . . ARTICHOKES DON’T AGREE WITH ME. . .”

As much as Bethany disliked talking to strangers, she decided that some effort was in order. She turned to the manager. “I’m surprised they didn’t seat you with Domeric’s band, Mr. Seaworth.”

“Well, they’re nice lads, but I’ve got sons older than them. I expect the bride felt I’d have more in common with you. And it’s Davos.”

Barbrey took up the cue and inquired further about the man’s family. 

“. . . Your home is pure contemporary . . . doesn’t fit like it does with mine . . .”

“. . . SOUTHRON TRASH. . .”

“. . . Breeding them is a whole other subject. I could spend days talking about breeding . . .”

Roose wasn’t talking. What he was doing was silently chewing, and if Bethany knew Roose—and she felt she did—probably calculating to the second how much time was left before he could escape.

As if on cue, he glanced at his watch.

“I know you want it to be over, but we can’t go yet,” Catelyn said under her breath. “There’s dancing and the cake to get through first. People will expect us to stay.”

“Walda already explained it to me,” Roose said. “I do understand what is expected of me. Thank you.”

Bethany exchanged a glance with her sister. They had noticed that Roose had brightened up every time the girl came around. “She’s been very helpful,” Bethany said, watching him. 

“Yes.” Roose opined that he wished the wedding planner had directed Walda to them sooner. “She has been very helpful in guiding us through this process.”

“It was er . . . a lovely ceremony . . . but it’s more elaborate than anything I’ve ever been to,” Davos said. “My own wedding was held in my mate’s backyard. Neither my family or my wife’s had much money.”

Roose continued as if the man hadn’t spoken. “She is not at all patronizing.”

Catelyn drew herself up ever so slightly.

So Barbrey was right after all, Bethany realized. Her sister had conjectured whatever the relationship was—and both of them had spent far too much time discussing it—that Catelyn was ready for it to be over. Barbrey doubted if Roose was, but watching the two of them now, Bethany concluded that he felt the same. 

After the obligatory dances, Bethany returned to the table to find herself alone. Roger had left half an hour ago taking Roose’s aunt, Ryella, and Jocelyn back to the hotel. She spotted Catelyn having an animated and apparently heated discussion with Cerenna’s uncle Tywin. Alyx had driven herself and must have left, triumphant in her continued possession of the chocolate set. Barbrey was dancing with Davos Seaworth. Bethany glanced around the ballroom until she spotted Roose listening in attentive bemusement to a radiant Walda.

* * *

Twelve months later

* * *

“I tell you,” Robert said. “They’re having an affair.”

Cersei refused to believe it. “Father and Catelyn Tully Stark? How much have you had to drink?” She hadn’t wanted to go to her cousin’s baby’s name day ceremony, but Robert had insisted. It would be a chance for him to pay his respects to his late best friend's widow. 

He had skipped out on Joffrey’s graduation to carouse in some bar, but when it came to anything involving the late Eddard Stark, her husband was a paragon of duty. 

Cersei looked. “He’s irritated, not attracted.” Catelyn Tully Stark seemed equally irked. 

Robert snorted. 

Cersei was very unclear why Catelyn was even here in the first place. Everyone else seemed to be either related to Cerenna or to her musician husband. “You’re wrong.”

“I am not.”

He really was like a fat toddler sometimes. She was about to tell him that when she noticed Catelyn picking off a piece of lint from Father’s jacket. Cersei froze. “You’re right. They _are_ having an affair.”

* * *


End file.
